01 April 2010
Grosse Isle
(Delta Canadair CRJ200 regional jet, operated by Pinnacle with the last Detroit Snow)
I am back here, back in the city, back in the early Spring, back where there is some distance and perspective to the tumult of the travel. If the Eddie-the-shaman is right, there is new energy in the air. Something, somewhere is going to happen.
I can’t tell if it is the result of a shaman journey or just the changing season. I cannot distinguish the effect of the longer hours of light on my skin from new energy. It is difficult to ascertain if the giddy feeling that surrounds me is the result of fasting or revelation, or both.
There is less pain from the arthritis, and more certainty in the impact of feet on the pavement.
I will take it for what it is, and shrug at the cause. Flying back from Michigan on the little jet, I had a window seat. It was hard to have anything else, since the Bombadier Canadair had only a single seat on the left hand side of the aircraft, with two on the right.
I don’t mind little jets. I loved the chance to fly when I was in the Navy. The brutally efficient jets were often nearly as old as I was, and the thought that they might crash was softened by the knowledge that the tactical birds had ejection seats.
The cargo planes, the land-based C-130s or the sturdy sea-going C-2 Greyhounds were a different matter. There was always a certain amount of fatalism about climbing into them, particularly if the journey was going to start from the deck of a carrier, or end at one.
Oxygen masks would sometimes fall unprompted from the ceiling; when I had a chance to ride in the cockpit I was surprised at the number of times the “master caution” button was stabbed by a distracted pilot.
The little jet I was in was a Canadair CRJ200 design, which essentially is a stetched-out Lear jet with fifty seats, and built by the Bombadier snow-mobile company in Quebec. This particular one was operated by an outfit called Pinnacle Airlines, which masqueraded Delta Airlines, which I think just ate Northwest, and absorbed the big international hub at Detroit.
There is no easy way to get to Michigan, as you know if you have business there. The best time driving I have managed across the tundra is more than thirteen hours, balls to the wall, with cops lurking on the toll roads and no respite until I got north of Saginaw.
Flying from DC to Detroit and renting a car saves some time, but there is a four hour drive from Metro Airport to the Northland, and it makes flight connections problematic due to ice and snow.
Traverse City is the closest real airport to the little town by the Bay, but that is still sixty miles away, the airplanes small, and schedules sporadic. If the need to spend more time there is as real as I think, I will have to mix up the options or go mad.
The little jet sits a maximum load of 52 souls onboard, and the port GE CF34-3A1 turbofan was located just over my ear. The pilot asked us to keep the window shades down until we got airborne to prevent overburdening the air conditioning. After an extended wait in the new terminal, and some peculiar meandering around the taxiways we launched into the late afternoon sun on what I thought might be runway 9R.
I remember when Metro was new, and even flew with my folks into the old Willow Run field just up the road where Henry Ford build the bombers that turned much of Germany to ash. I saw one of the first Boeing 707s to fly into the Motor City shortly after they entered commercial service in 1958. Dad took us to the observation deck to watch the jets taxi in. He was not long out of the cockpit himself, and his leather flight jacket was still glossy and new.
The turbofan whined urgently as the brakes were let out and we did the take-off roll. I normally like an aisle seat, so can move around a bit in the insanely constricted seats of the commercial world. My premium service miles are long gone, so I travel with the other fish. It was a bit of a novelty to watch the runway roll by and then feel the jet leap into the air.
The pilots were young. I did not know if they were ex-military, or just interested civilians. There was an assertive quality to the climb-out that reminded me of the no-bullshit military approach, and the Captain or First Officer wrapped it pretty tight to the left off the runway to set the course SE for Dulles.
I looked down with curiosity at the city where I grew up. Romulus was swiftly behind us, and I could see Lake Saint Claire to the north, beyond the tall buildings of the dead city. I realized we were going to pass into Canadian airspace well south of the city, and right over the long-decommissioned Grosse Isle Naval Air Station.
Pressing my head against the plastic of the window I could see it ahead. The southern end of the island is paved in a great concrete triangle, the old-style military approach that permitted a pilot to launch into the wind from anywhere on the field.
Ford Island at Pearl is like that, right down to the sea-plane ramps.
Funny how some things don’t change much, even after they are long gone. Dad flew from there, in his blue Navy AD4J Skyraider. “Straight and level, I can outrun a P-51 Mustang,” he told me, one time, “And carry more ordnance than a B-17.”
They used to fly to Toledo to simulate bombing the refinery there. He took us as little kids on one of his drill weekends to meet his squadron-mates in the Reserves, and he joked that being east of the Mississippi was the best decision he had ever made. Everyone to the west of the river went to Korea, while his squadron waited in readiness for the Red Hoard to pour into the Fulda Gap in Germany.
Grosse Isle passed below, basking in the late sun, getting smaller as we climbed over the ship canal on the Windsor side of the ship canal and left it all behind, just as Dad is doing now.
It was otherwise an uneventful flight with a nice landing at the other end, gently coming down through ground effect. If the number of landings equal the number of take-offs, everything is just fine.
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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