Close Call

 Most people think bullets are loud. Sometimes they are quiet. Sometimes you only hear them after they miss.

I was home in Edmonton, visiting my family, breathing the air that always smells a little like childhood and possibility. While I was there, I decided it was time to renew my Canadian Private Pilot License. Ten hours with an instructor. Check rides. Signoff complete. Legal to carry passengers again.

The first ones I took up were not strangers. They were my youngest brother Russ, his wife Lisa, and my Dad. Three people I loved enough to trust with my wings. Or maybe three people who trusted me more than I had yet earned back.

We launched from Cooking Lake Airport east of the city. The plan was simple and proud. Fly into downtown Edmonton. Touch and go at Blatchford Field. Then right back to Cooking Lake. Nothing dramatic. A bit of nostalgia with a propeller.

The approach into Blatchford went high. My fault. Then the tower asked me to keep my speed up because a Twin Otter was close behind. No room for laziness. So I added throttle. Threw in a sideslip to lose altitude. Full flaps to tighten the descent. And the landing was sweet. I mean sweet. The kind that makes you feel like your training is silk in your hands.

Then I pushed for the go-around.

Throttle forward. Flaps up. Rotate at speed. Nose up. That familiar moment where the Earth should let go of the airplane.

But it didn’t.

We were climbing like a tired elevator. The end of the runway rushed up. Then the tracks. Rail yard lights sliding past the wingtips. The Cessna 172 felt glued to the ground. I pushed for speed. Trimmed for climb. Nothing gave me what I expected. One thought cut through everything.

This is how it happens. This is how I take my father, my brother, and his wife into the ground.

I scanned again. And there it was. Flaps still at thirty percent.

The aircraft model I had just retrained in had a flap switch that only retracts fully if held. Tap it once and it stops early. I had tapped. The flaps had obeyed. My assumptions had not.

I hauled the lever up and held it. The climb rate crept up. Two hundred feet per minute. Then five hundred. Then seven hundred. We crawled out of danger like someone pulling themselves back from the edge of a cliff by two fingers.

I glanced at Dad. His face just beginning to register concern. I gave a thin smile that lied about everything. “Forgot to put the flaps up,” I said. Calm voice. Cold skin.

The flight back to Cooking Lake was uneventful. The landing was butter. The sun was laying gold across the Alberta horizon. A perfect summer evening. You could almost pretend the scare was never real.

But I know better.

I dodged that bullet. And I earned a scar you cannot see but will never forget. The kind of scar that whispers every time you reach for a switch. Complacency kills. Checklists save. Training matters. Aircraft do not care about your pride.

Here is the truth buried in that moment. Near misses are sermons. And the wise pilot listens before the second bullet comes.

I write

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Keeping Up with the Jones'

 They tell you not to compare. Do not measure your life against the neighbor’s. Do not chase the illusion of status. Wise words. And mostly ignored by anyone with a pulse. But the one luxury I dream of is not a shiny car or a gadget that glows in the dark. I want land. And a home rooted in that land. A mansion, yes, because why lie about the scale of the vision? Something built to last. Something that cannot be folded into a suitcase or lost the moment a visa expires. Picture this. A wide stretch of earth that belongs to my family name. Soil that remembers the footsteps of children now grown. Trees that rise taller long after I am gone. A house with a high roof and windows that pull in the morning sun instead of shutting it out. A library filled with the books I wrote and the ones that wrote me. A workshop where tools rest not in transit cases but on familiar walls. A kitchen where laughter outnumbers plates. A long table where every seat has a story, and none are borrowed. A pl...
Read more

Humble Pie

 We all have a private accounting system. You put in effort. You expect return. You sacrifice now. You imagine reward later. Neat math. Encouraging math. Math that makes you feel in control. For a long time, I thought I understood that math. I believed that twenty five years working abroad in the Middle East, away from family roots and Canadian soil, would translate into financial freedom. I imagined coming home with savings stacked, investments humming, and a calm sense that the future was covered. Then the bill came due. It turns out life charges interest on distance. On risk. On uncertainty. On raising kids in a country where family safety costs more than anyone back home could ever imagine. On working for companies that benefit from your best years but forget your name the moment the contract ends. And suddenly the numbers did not add up. I found myself staring at a truth harder than I liked. All that time. All that sweat. All that faith in a system. And I was not wealthy....
Read more

Now You See Me

 If I could appear and disappear at will, I would not waste the ability doing parlor tricks or sneaking into bank vaults. I know what it is like to be needed in a moment that decides everything. I know what it feels like to wish I could vanish from a moment that hurts. So here is how I would use my superpower. When my son faced his first night behind a locked door, I would appear beside him. Not to break him out. Not to bend justice. Just to sit. To tell him the walls were temporary and the world outside was still waiting for him. Fathers cannot always fix, but we can always remain. And when the decision came down from a judge with more power over my family than any human should have, I would disappear into my own calm, just long enough not to let fear speak for me. I would appear in the homes of every hiring manager who tossed my résumé aside after fifteen years of loyalty evaporated with the word “redundant.” I would stand right in front of them until they could not ignore my...
Read more