Circle Of Friends - The 5280

I had entered into the Army two weeks after getting out of high school, and right after I was discharged I went to work for my dad helping him finish a house he was building. I didn’t even get more than a three-day break before starting college. I know it sounds like I’m whining here, and not many people have much sympathy for a twenty-year-old kid with no responsibilities who says he is tired, but damn it, I was. I wanted to party and get my white count down to a reasonable level after two years of no steady girlfriend, and I had a hard time relating to the other freshmen who were all two years younger than I was. I was pretty low key about it, but I also resented the fact that a lot of the students were just holed up there avoiding the draft while I had been overseas in the Army.

I had quite a bit of money saved up and wasn’t hurting any, so I headed south and bummed around Southern California for six months, working a little when I had to. Dad called up one day and practically begged me to come back and work for him. His new wife was a realtor and they had a sort of partnership going where she would find a cheap piece of land and he would build a house on it, speculating that it would sell. He sold the shit out of them and couldn’t keep up with the demand, and didn’t want to take on a partner he couldn’t trust, so he suggested that we work together and ‘get rich’, as he put it.

I liked the work. It was kind of neat after the bullshit make-work attitude of the Army to actually be able to do something you could take pride in. We did really well too, and we even had enough excess to afford to be able to build a duplex of our own, one unit of which I shared with my girlfriend.

Some people build their own homes, and a few just hire a carpenter by the hour to do it for them, but most homes are built one of two ways: Custom or speculation. Speculation homes, or ‘Spec Houses’ are funded and built by the contractor and remains his property until sold, and that was Dad’s preferred method. The advantage is that you set your own schedule and have complete control of the finished product. The disadvantage is that you don’t get paid until the house is sold, and you take the risk of a downturn in the market. Custom homes are built for the customer, who may be a developer but is usually the ultimate owner of the home. You bid the job for a fixed price and you get your money every week, but you lose out on the opportunity to make a huge profit on the project. It is also frustrating to have to alter or redo something every time the owner’s wife changes her mind.

I had been working with Dad just over a year and had just turned twenty-two when we changed from spec houses to custom. The first job we did was a house on a private airport, or ‘airpark’ as they are called. The architect seemed to know his stuff and we had a decent set of plans to work from, and the owner wasn’t into changing a lot of things so it went pretty smoothly. The owner lived in the city, and he would drive out every couple of days to check up on things.

One day he flew in instead of driving. We were working along when suddenly there was this loud roar, and we all ducked our heads even though he was a hundred feet high or more. He went out a ways, turned, and glided back in, sat down gently, and then taxied to the home site. It was noon, and as he and Dad went through the house I walked over to his airplane to check it out.

I had never been in anything smaller than a 707 at that time. The Huey was the National Bird of Viet Nam but I hadn’t even been in one of those, however I knew about as much about airplanes as any other non-pilot. You pulled back on the stick and they went up, they were god-awful expensive to buy and operate, and you had to have a special hard-to-get license to fly them.

“Well, what do you think of her?” The owner startled me. He had came back to get some paperwork for Dad.

“Looks neat,” I answered, “is it new?”

“Oh no, this is a 1963 Piper Cherokee 180. I just had it painted, but the new ones look just the same. Hey, you’re the contractor’s son, aren’t you?”

“Guilty.” I answered. “Officially Dad and I are partners, but he’s the brains and I just pound nails.”

“Have you ever been up in a small plane?”

“No, just airliners.”

“I’ll be here all day,” he said, “and I’d be happy to give you a short ride after work.”

“You bet!” I was still invincible at that age, and I wasn’t the least bit hesitant in putting my life in the hands of someone I didn’t even know.

Later that afternoon we strapped ourselves in and he started the engine. I was surprised at how much everything shook as he taxied across the rough grass to the end of the strip. He stopped before pulling on to the runway, locked the brakes, and revved the engine up.

“You always check the magnetos.” He explained as he cycled the ignition key. He checked a couple of more things and then turned onto the runway and gave it full power.

I was amazed at how noisy it was, and how much everything rattled and clattered as it accelerated. The other end of the strip seemed to be coming at us way too fast when he eased back on the control column and suddenly everything smoothed out as it slid into the air. He reduced power after about a minute, and the din was reduced to a level in which we could talk.

“How fast are we going?” I asked

“Climbing like this, about a hundred and ten. One we get to altitude it’ll cruise about one forty.” He said, reducing the power slightly and lowering the nose a little. He controlled the thing with just the fingertips of his left hand, casually nudging the control yoke from time to time.

“Here. You take it. Just put your feet on the rudder pedals and push down and turn the wheel in the direction you want to go.”

Immediately everything went to shit. The airplane started yawing right to left as I seesawed the rudder, and the wings rocked as I tried to stabilize the unruly beast.

“Take your hands off the controls.” He directed. I did, and after a few oscillations the airplane straightened itself right out. “Lead the turns with the rudder, and use very gentle pressure on the yoke.” He suggested. I tried that, and in a few minutes it would go just about where I pointed it, but in the process I had lifted the nose, causing it to pitch up and slow down. He took over and turned back towards the field. He pulled back the power and we descended, and then he eased the nose up to slow us down. He finally made a circuit around the field and landed the airplane gently on the grass.

“Thanks.” I said, meaning it. “That was a lot of fun. How long does it take to learn to fly one of these, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “I’ll let you know if I ever do learn how. Seriously, about two or three months.”

The next day was Sunday, and after getting un-cunted I made a pot of coffee and perused the Sunday paper while Jen went back to sleep. I had sold my Honda after I got back from the Army, as I needed a car to drive during the winter. I kind of wanted another bike and was checking out the classified ads. Right next to ‘Motorcycles’ was ‘Aviation”. ‘Learn to fly!’ The ad screamed. ‘$899 including ground school. Free demo flight.’

‘Hell, I could afford that!’ I thought as I read the rest of the ads in that section. There were a lot of acronyms and abbreviations that didn’t mean much to me, but there were several used airplanes for sale for less than four thousand dollars, or about what a new car cost back then.

“Here’s a list of areomedical examiners in the area.” The instructor said later that afternoon as I was signing the paperwork after the demo flight. “Get a second or third class medical. It will also be your Student Pilot’s License. If you are a veteran the GI bill will pay for your commercial, flight instructor, and instrument ratings. You have a real nice touch with the airplane, you could make a pretty good living flying.” I had heard that type of line before from a prostitute in Nevada.

There was a cartoon on the wall of the flight school. “Six munths ago I cu’unt even spell Pilut, and now I are one!” It took me three months, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Even the ground school was fun. Unlike high school and college where they pounded unless facts and trivia into your head, everything presented in the class was directly relevant to the task at hand. It only took about eight hours of dual instruction to learn the basic operation of the aircraft, at which time I soloed; the rest of the time was spent honing those skills as well as learning the trip planning, regulations, navigation, weight and balance, and weather interpretation needed to safely fly the airplane. I easily passed the written test, which is the downfall of may would-be pilots, and my instructor signed me off for the flight test, or check ride as it is called.

A FAA Designated Examiner, who was also the owner of the operation, administered the check ride. This may seem like a conflict of interest, but he also owned the airplanes and he would have the most to lose if an unqualified student was issued a license. My instructor had done a good job and the check ride was a breeze. I rented an airplane and gave Jen the honor of being my first passenger. She hated it. Some people are never comfortable in small airplanes and she was one of them. She warned me beforehand about it, but I thought she might loosen up a bit with me at the controls, but this was going to be one facet of my life that she wouldn’t share.

Small airplanes aren’t expensive to operate, but the maintenance, insurance, and hangar rental are so expensive that multiple ownership is a popular alternative to an individual owning one. I wanted to fly, so I joined a flying club and became a paper partner in a Cessna 172. Dad liked to fly with me, and he was even making noises about how we might benefit from having an airplane, in as much as the company was growing and expanding. My immediate goal was to become instrument rated, and possibly pick up a commercial license at the same time. Private pilots can fly anywhere the weather is good, but they are prohibited from flying in the clouds unless they possess an instrument rating. My GI bill would pay for the instruction and aircraft rental, so in effect it would cost me nothing and offer free flying.

The instructor that I had worked with on my private license left to fly for an air taxi company in Alaska, so I became Doug’s newest student. I had seen Doug around, but had not flown with him. He was about thirty-two had just about every rating there was, and a deep resonant voice that was easy to hear in the noisy airplane. He also had a reputation around the airport as being a world-class cunt hound. Some people swore up and down that he would fuck a snake if someone would hold it’s head, while others maintained that he would fuck a bush if he thought there might be a snake in it. After being around him a while I figured he would fuck the crack of dawn if it would hold still long enough, and I decided that if the guy ever got truly desperate, like after three days with no sex, I wouldn’t want to share a motel room with him. He had a wife, but that didn’t seem to slow him down any, and the more I got to know him the more I wondered about their relationship. He was a competent instructor, that much was certain, and even if I didn’t go along with his idea of monogamy I did have something in common with him; the small skull and crossbones on his collar indicated that he was also a plankowner. I happened to mention the pin on his collar one day, and how I had one just like it. He looked at me a little funny until I gave him a secret recognition word.

“I thought that The Order of the Plank had been disbanded.” He commented.

“I was the last group of initiates,” I replied, “in fact I sort of took the fall for what happened that night. Is that a problem with you?”

“No. I heard about it though, and it’s a damn shame. It sounded like an accident to me.”

We didn’t talk any more about that, other than him mentioning some of the great pussy that he had scored in college.

The Private pilot training had been a lot of fun, kind of low key and full of new discovery. The Commercial was a little more intense, with some extra maneuvers thrown in and an emphasis on smoothness, and I passed it easily. The instrument rating, which was needed to utilize the Commercial license for anything other than giving scenic flights, was a lot of work. In addition to having to learn to fly the airplane only by referring to the dashboard gauges you also have to learn to function in the rigidly controlled airspace system and how to make the difficult and demanding instrument approaches to fogged in airports. I was about half way through this program when Doug collared me one evening with a plankowner’s favor, which I had to grant if possible.

“I’ve got a gal that wants to join the 5280,” he said, “and I need a pilot.”

“What’s the 5280?” I asked, knowing that Doug was a hell of a lot better pilot than I would ever be.

“The 5280. You know, the Mile High Club.”

I finally understood what he was talking about. Every pilot knows about the Mile High Club. To join you have to have sex a mile above the earth’s surface. Just going to Denver or some other high altitude place won’t qualify. It has to be in an airplane at least 5280 feet above the ground. I knew Doug had a wife at home, and I also knew that it had never stopped him before. I didn’t want to get mixed up in his shenanigans but I had taken an oath to grant any other plankowner any reasonable request. Doug was a long-standing member of the Mile High Club and he had talked some bimbo into joining. It would be foolhardy to leave the airplane controls unattended even with an autopilot so a safety pilot was required.

“Uh, okay, but I don’t intend on joining myself.” I warily replied.

“Fine, whatever, suit yourself. Let’s go!” He was hot to trot.

I told Jen that I had an opportunity to log some free night flying time and drove to the airport. Doug was already there, and so was the wannabe mile-higher. I had expected some drunk old floozy he had dug up put of a bar somewhere, but instead she was a very attractive and very drunk chick.

“She looks really young.” I didn’t have any problems with Doug’s marital fidelity but I wasn’t going to aid and abet statutory rape.

“She’s nineteen,” he countered, “I know because I’m her instructor. She’s a student pilot.”

That was good enough for me, and I started in helping Doug remove the extra seats from the airplane. The Chariot of Love was a Cessna 206, which is the aircraft equivalent of a Ford Econoline van. It has a long cabin with three rows of seats and can haul almost a ton of payload, depending on the amount of fuel carried. Although it has a large Continental engine that sucks 100-octane gas at a prodigious rate it isn’t much faster than a 172 with half the horsepower.

I had never flown a 206, but I had flown part of my Commercial in the slightly smaller182, which is a big brother to the 172 I was quite familiar with. Doug coached me through the start-up and take off, and soon we were at 8500 feet altitude, which is just over a mile above the ground.

“Hold west of the VOR on the 270 degree radial, left turns.” Doug requested, giving me a holding pattern to enter and hold while he slid his seat back and started to undress. He had rolled a sleeping bag out next to the only other seat; more to protect the carpet from pecker tracks than for comfort, and the girl was already undressed and waiting for him. The objective of a holding pattern is to kill time, not cover miles, so normal operating procedure is to reduce power and slow down to save fuel. This reduced the noise level to where I could hear Doug’s grunts and the slapping of their flesh as they rutted.

After a while the pungent, fishlike smell of their sex was overpowered by the acrid tang of smoke as they lit up post-coital cigarettes. Doug reached up and offered me one, but I had quit a year ago and wasn’t going to start in again. There was a little bit of quiet chatter between them, and then a rustle and commotion as Doug got dressed. He slipped back into the copilot’s seat, tossed a Trojan on my lap and said, “You’re up, sport.”

I looked back over the seat. The girl was languidly fingering herself, and gave me the old come-on wink. I didn’t even bother responding to Doug’s outlandish suggestion, I just thought of Jen laying in bed waiting for my return. About two seconds is all I thought of her before handing the airplane off to Doug, unlatching my seat belt, and sliding the seat back.

Doug told me his philosophy as we pushed the airplane back into the hangar.

“Never pass up a piece of ass. It may be the best one you ever get, and it also may be the last.”

I got home late that night, feeling guilty, and quietly undressed and slipped into bed. Jen was an early riser, and she was already dressed when I got up.

“Is she blonde?” She said, accusingly displaying the condom wrapper that she had found in my clothing as she straightened things up. “Does she have big tits? I’ll bet she does, I know how much you like blondes with big tits.”

There is a time to talk, and a time to shut the fuck up and listen, and I listened to her for as long as I could stand to before leaving for work. There was nothing I could think of to say, and no way to rationally defend my actions. I made it through the day somehow, and when I got home that afternoon the only trace of her was the engagement ring and her ‘Fuck You’ note on the table. She had packed up and moved out.

I was devastated. Jen was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and even though we had our differences I considered her to be my true soul mate and I couldn’t imagine ever finding anyone with half as much class as she had.

As bad as my pain was, Doug’s was far worse. I don’t know if he figured his wife was too dumb to know about his little affairs or if he just figured that she was too insecure or didn’t have the guts to confront him about them. I had never met her, but someone said that she could be a ‘tough little cookie’. That must have been correct, because that little indiscretion pushed her too far and late that night she handcuffed him to their marriage bed, took his balls in her bare hands, and mashed them into jelly with an eighteen inch long piece of iron pipe. She took all night to do it too, and somewhere in the process one of the little blood vessels in Doug’s head let go. She waited until morning before she calmly called the police, and reported the assault, and then disappearing.

Doug is confined to a wheelchair now and is holed up in a nursing home. I went to visit him right after he got there, and I wanted to ask him if the last piece of ass he got was also the best, but all he could do is look at me and slobber.