Memories of my life up in the sky

The recent Redding Air Show 2009 at Redding Municipal Airport brought back lots of memories for me. Watching those Blue Angels reminded me of my cousin, a "Cracker Jack" pilot who did his share of heroics in Vietnam. I think he could have been a Blue Angel pilot had he survived the war.

But I say he was a hero because one heroic decision he made saved a friendly village full of innocent families in the Da Nang area of the country. He could have dropped the load from up higher, but chose to fly low and strafe a convoy of enemy firepower that ultimately shot him down. The roaring of engines at the air show gave me a brief sense of man-made power that defends us here in America.

Redding Air Show 2009 gave a sample of the power and finesse this great nation has developed. The comparison between the WWII vintage fighter plane and today's fighter aircraft brought goose bumps to my arms as they performed a slow fly-by for the crowd that roared with enthusiasm.

I watched many planes take off during the show. Some did aerobatic stunts. Others displayed speed and power.

Way back when, I used to do a lot of flying on the job while working in the media.

I've flown with pilots in tail-draggers, twin Sky Masters, low-wing Piper Cherokees, high-wing Cessnas and numerous other makes and models of aircraft including helicopters.

Flying to television interviews out of town, the TV crew and I flew to Sacramento, Chico and north to Siskiyou County locations.

Probably the eeriest flight was in my days at the Record Searchlight. A plane had crashed on Bully Choop Mountain to the west and I was one of the first journalists on the site. But, we needed an aerial shot to show the proximity of the aircraft as it was positioned in a cluster of trees.

One man and two women died at the crash after surviving some 55 days, according to documentation in a journal found at the crash site.

My girlfriend who worked in the photo lab decided to go with the editor and I to record the sight from the air. We flew in an antiquated tail-dragger that day. I asked my friend if she had some crackers or something to take along. I'm not necessarily suspicious by nature, but we were two women and one man taking flight that day.

Would I consider it dej<0x00E0> vu?

Hmmm, maybe. We took crackers anyway. I don't like the idea of starving to death.

The flight went well and I recorded the plane lying crumpled on the mountainside.

Later, while working for the Valley Post, I caught a flight over the Fountain Fire with a CDF spotter plane team.

Now that was a scary flight. The huge mushroom cloud looming over Round Mountain and Montgomery Creek was a sight to behold, not to mention the terrifying experience when our plane was momentarily sucked into it. These are times when your life suddenly passes before you in a few seconds.

Another dej<0x00E0> vu moment occurred since I had just watched the Richard Dreyfuss movie, "Always" and saw the actor's plane go down permanently in that movie. It was a bit unnerving as my camera crashed against our aircraft's plastic window during the pilot's escape maneuver.

Pieces of debris from the fire continued to slam against the Sky Master air attack plane as the pilot suggested we look for a place to land.

Land?

I would rather stay up here, I thought.

Well, we didn't have to land, but we did choreograph the rescue of a bunch of timber fallers who had found a huge meadow to park all their logging equipment in as the fire raged all about them.

There is a lot to say about flying and everybody who does much of it has a story of some sort. Airline flight is still the most practical and fastest modes of travel.

However, I don't' think we should ever become complacent about it. Not after 9-11-01.