V1, V2, Rotate, Airborne, Gear up, 500 feet… Every day began with these words, and unfortunately, the dreams of freedom that a child once dreamed of were now, after a few years of work, the relentless routine of any job. It was different from many familiar routines; it wasn’t an office, it wasn’t a cubicle, but in any case, it wasn’t something creative.
Waking up incredibly early, checking the plane in the cold, fog-shrouded dawn of the Bogotá savannah. The preflight inspection, the weight and balance checklist, the chat with the dispatcher. Filling up with gas, opening the flight manual, preparing the routes. Take off heading for Zipaquirá, turning at the Utica NDB (Non Directional Beacon), taking Mariquita Airway 270. The drop procedure, preparing for descent. Checking in with the Bogotá tower, carefully following the ILS (Instrument Landing System), learning to speak to the passengers in a flat, monotonous voice, suggesting they fly with us again, unloading, landing, loading again, and taking off…AHHH!!!
How this driving routine managed to crush the wonder of soaring through the skies. It becomes so mechanical, everything is so repetitive, and the routes are traveled on a schedule with such regularity that the only surprise of your days lies in the weather conditions. The condition that the weather imposed on me was restlessness. But it wasn’t that weather that relieved the routines. The conditions that nourished me were the weather. The weather was clouds, it was rain, it was thermal currents. The weather that varied without repeating itself every day was the weather of the sky. The meteors.
Every day I flew between clouds, clear, white, and gray. Every day I encountered the winds, the cirrus clouds and their silent threat of ice, or the stratus clouds and their indication of stability. The cumulus clouds scattered through space floated like cotton balls in the harvest. On sunny days, they could be seen frolicking on the horizon. Their shapes defied abstraction and occasionally transformed into giants. They also became charged, overloaded. They turned into rain. In jolts and leaps. Even on the sunniest cloudless day, they would attack in the form of a cat. (CAT: Clear Air Turbulence).
But I lost myself in these marvels of the landscape, I was amazed at being able to be up there, the routine was slowly killing me, and the dreams of the air turned into questions, rational and adult questions.
Si quieres que era lo que había en tierra cuando el piloto miraba, sigue leyendo aquí.
Si quieres saber que preguntas hizo el piloto pasa al siguiente link.
Si quieres saber mas sobre las nubes y sus formas pasa al siguiente link.
