Roy and I go back to our days as students at SFA in Nacogdoches. We went to church there at the East Main Church of Christ - at a time when I was the song leader and Roy attended with his young wife and toddler. As time passed we graduated and went our separate ways - me to Memphis, Texas, after accepting a teaching position and Roy to Arlington where he worked IT for American Airlines. We stayed in touch, and I even occasionally made the five-hour drive down to visit his family and attend church with them some weekends.
In the summer of 1984 Roy was chosen to officiate at the wedding of a good friend of his named David Vining in the countryside just outside of Durango, Colorado. Roy had a friend (another David) who owned a Cessna 172 that was based out of Meacham field in Fort Worth, and who had offered to give Roy a ride to the wedding. Since Memphis was on the way I was invited along for the ride. At the appointed time I was waiting with my bag on the barren, windswept apron at the local airport.
Roy and David arrived on schedule, and off we went to Colorado.
The flight was uneventful at first...sunny bright skies and little to worry about, as the flat plains of the Texas panhandle and eastern New Mexico provided ample opportunity to land should something go wrong. But as we crossed into Colorado and approached the Rockies things got interesting.
Mountain flying is tricky enough, but on this day we were skirting the mountaintops as they rose higher and higher, just in time for the afternoon thunderstorms, which lowered the cloud base as they intensified. Before long we were, at times, no more than 500 feet AGL (above ground level), buffeted by winds and, soon enough, rain and lightning. I was sitting in the back seat, with Roy in the right seat up front helping David identify landing spots using the map and what could be seen below. I think we would have landed if given a choice, but in the mountainous terrain there were no options so we plowed ahead. The lightning, rain and wind grew more furious.
David was a champ, keeping us in the right general direction as we searched for and threaded any passes ahead allowing us to stay under the cloud base. While David piloted the plane Roy stayed glued to the map and terrain below for anything flat in case we needed to go down. My job was to help David identify thunder cells and track where they were drifting so we could avoid the worst. At one point we increased our airspeed to charge between two of these cells, and when I looked back they closed together not 30 seconds after we'd made it through. It's amazing we didn't get caught by wind shear.
Meanwhile it was getting dark. I don't know how it happened, but we arrived in Durango, landing safely in the dark, in a driving rain with thunder and lightning all around. One of those times when you think, "Well, guess the Lord isn't finished with me yet on this here Earth, because somehow we made it." I was in awe of David's piloting skill, especially in light of the fact that this was his first mountain flying experience.
No comments:
Post a Comment