Different Circles

Jake actually wanted to stay one more day even though he knew Celia was burning to get to Barquisimeto to finally see her family. His reason for wanting to delay their trip was not because he thought there was much more to see and do in Caracas—although he did think this. It was because a heavy cloud cover had drifted in while they were there, blanketing the entire region in uniform overcast with occasional thunderstorms. Jake did not want to fly in conditions like this.

“Why not?” Suzie asked him when he finally confessed his reason to her. “You’re IFR certified. A flight like this is no problem.”

“I am IFR certified,” he confirmed. “And I fly IFR all the time, usually when we’re going back and forth to Oregon, but ... well ... I only really fly it when I have to go above seventeen thousand and it’s required or if there are spotty clouds. I’ve never really done it when the clouds were so dense I couldn’t see the ground at all—except in training. If there is thick cloud cover or rain or anything like that, I usually just postpone my flight until the weather is better.”

“That’s no way to live your life,” she scoffed. “You have an all-weather aircraft now. Embrace it. Don’t be afraid of it.”

“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, “but I think it’s something I need to work my way up to.”

“Nonsense,” she scoffed. “I’ll sit in the copilot chair and talk you through it. Let’s get Band Geek back to her people.”

“Why don’t you just take the controls for me?” he asked.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “While I’m sure I could fly that plane if I needed to, I’m not type-rated in it. You are. You have to fly it.”

“I really don’t know about this, Suzie,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll tell you ... there’s a little motivational speech I learned from Band Geek that she says she learned from you. It seems to fit the situation right here and now.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

She looked him dead in the eye, her expression one of challenge. “You don’t have a fuckin’ hair on your ass if you don’t make that flight tomorrow morning.”

Jake looked at her in astonishment. “That’s hitting below the belt,” he told her.

She smiled. “Sometimes you have to do that in the interests of teaching.”

And so, it came to pass that the four of them were dropped off at SBIA the next morning at 10:00 AM to get ready for the thirty-eight-minute flight to Jacinto Lara International Airport in Barquisimeto. Jake’s doubts took a significant upturn when he and Suzie went in to compose a flight plan and Jake reviewed the weather report for his destination.

“The ceiling is at thirty-four hundred at JLIA,” he told Suzie. “That’s only fourteen hundred feet AGL.”

“So?” she enquired. “You have ILS. That’s well above the safety limit.”

“I don’t actually use the approach autopilot,” he told her. “I never have since training. I use the nav to give me the glideslope and then hand-fly the landing once I have visual. I’ve never let the autopilot make my descent before.”

“Seems like a good day to start,” she said flippantly. “This is a perfect time to learn to trust your ILS.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she cut him off.

“Do I need to bring up the hair on your ass—or lack thereof—again?” she asked.

She did not. And, in truth, the idea of having her sit next to him and talk him through the landing was alleviating some of his fear. If Suzie was not nervous about the upcoming IFR flight, why should he be?

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

They put together a flight plan that had them ascending to FL-310 and then descending into the JLIA pattern for an ILS approach to Runway 09. Jake filed the plan and they went back out to the main terminal, where Celia and Laura were drinking bloody Marys in the bar and chatting about the things she was going to show them in her hometown.

“And you can pee in the plane now!” Laura told Celia excitedly. “An actual normal pee, into a real toilet, with toilet paper and everything!”

“I think I’m probably going to have to try that out before we land,” Celia said.

“It’s really cool,” Laura said. “Maybe not four point seven-five million dollars cool, but cool all the same.”

Jake had a fuel truck come over and pump in another four hundred kilos of jet fuel. Once it left—after running his credit card for the charges—he sealed up the plane. Jake and Suzie strapped into the pilot and copilot seats, respectively. Laura sat in the forward-facing seat just behind Jake. Celia sat in the seat next to her, just behind Suzie. Jake fired up the engines. Ten minutes later, they were taxiing. It took almost twenty minutes before they were cleared for takeoff.

“God, this thing is sweet,” Suzie commented as they accelerated down the runway—her tone almost sexual in nature.

Jake lifted off at 110 knots, a bit slower than he had had to at Guaymaral despite the additional weight. They roared into the sky, climbing at 2900 feet per minute. Within three minutes they were in the clouds and could no longer see anything but grey blur.