Sylvia's Journal

It was hard to get our Quaker meeting started on Sunday. A high pitched sound from the alarm system pervaded the room. I seem to be deaf to that high frequency as I heard nothing and was wondering why people kept getting up and appeared generally frantic about solving a problem I knew nothing about. I found out later about the sound once everyone had given up to change the conditions of our Sunday worship.

If you believe everything happens for a reason you would have been right. The noise interference made for some wonderful messages about trying to keep the external environment under control when you cannot and the role of irritants in creating something of beauty. The pearl and the sand grain in the oyster came to mind, as did the crab grass that keeps growing in our yard (squint and you can appreciate its beautiful lust green color).

Out of the irritants came a wonderful meeting with the spontaneous singing of a round that sounded to me like the four part harmony songs that South(ern) Africans are so good at.

Before yesterday, my last flight with Bill was about 8 months ago. In the meantime his 2496X was repainted with a faster speed stripe on the outside and new leather on the inside. He keeps the leather gleaming after the students mess it up.

Although there were clouds all around us, and some as low as 1800 feet, we managed to stay under them and make our way to Worcester where skies were clear. From there we turned south to Willimantic in Connecticut where we landed. The place was deserted so we didn’t tarry long and headed out to the only corridor that was relatively cloud free, in easterly direction.

The plan was to fly over the Newport mansions but the clouds were too low so we stayed on the other side of the waterway and admired the views over Providence, Fall River and then turned westwards again to fly around Boston towards an off putting and low hanging bank of clouds. On those moments I am happy to fly with someone who has an instrument rating and could fly through the clouds if needed.

In the end we didn’t need to fly on instruments as the clouds dispersed up and sideways, letting us fly clear through to our home base in Beverly.

It was so much fun flying again. On the outward flight I didn’t do much other than putting in the occasional radio or VOR frequencies and admiring the landscape. On the inbound I had the controls for a while. Bill had trimmed the plane so well that I didn’t need to do much to keep the altitude and speed constant.

If I still had my own plane and if I still would have all my confidence to fly solo or with Axel, I could be in Northampton in 45 minutes to get another Faro fix anytime when the skies are clear. May be one day…