Keep Flying

 

    The biggest surprise to me was the total absence of fear throughout the experience. If anything, I was immensely philosophical and calm. My situational awareness had closed down to me, my trike and the padi and those trees, and of course the wind. I marvel that I had the presence of mind to switch off amidst the pitching and swinging about (the fact that I forgot the magneto switches is a car and not an aircraft habit - something I have to learn). But I tried to do the right thing, I was clear headed, calm, thinking and in some sort of command until almost the last. And not the least bit afraid, just a bit of "Oh Fuuuck" as I went in thinking that if it had to be the trees I had got it just right. The banana tree, I thought, as I had it in my sights, would help cushion the impact.

 

Alick Longhurst

19 March 2000 (with some later comments)

PS. 1: If I may misquote Water Rat, "There is simply nothing better than messing about in trikes".

 

PS. 2: Some recent e-mails.

From John McBeth to Melinda Liu:

Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 14:43:07 +0800

Melinda,

Call it an emergency landing. Call it a gentle glide into a coconut plantation. Hell, call it an unplanned visit to a surprised West Java village. But really, there's no getting away from it -- the fucker CRASHED. Yuli and I would like to report, however, that he behaved magnificently. In fact we think he actually enjoyed it. He had a big grin on his face. He was cool, polite and diplomatic in the face of half the population of West Java, all of whom were clamouring to help, get paid or simply get some attention. We hope Alick will be back in the air by early June when he is due to carry out a flour-bombing run on our West Java beach house. The targets: the assembled guests at the birthday celebrations for myself and Clint Eastwood. Hopefully, the weather then will be a lot more settled. Regards

 

From Melinda to John:

john,

very amusing to hear about how you got so pissed off at not being flour-bombed that you went out looking for him to find out why -- were you really waiting around to be buzzed by His Highness? anyway, the concern and energy that you and yuli showed was very much appreciated by both of us (even if he was too shy to say so). the way i look at it, he needs about five more emergency landings before he can even THINK about flying across indonesia. let's just hope none of them are worse than this one was. allbest, love to Yuli,

melinda