A Bumpy Ride across Carson Skies: an overly-dramatized recount of flying in a single-engine plane on a breezy day

The first time I rode in a small plane was at the Carson City Airport Open house. I was probably 5, my brother probably 8, along with our dad who took us to geek out over the WWII planes and tanks.

The pilot offered us a ride, and we climbed aboard a small orange-and-white plane with a bench seat in the back and two seats in the front. My dad sat beside the pilot, my brother and I strapped in the back.

About thirty seconds after take-off, my brother and I noticed something horrific to our child-minds: in the back of the cockpit, buzzing around beside us, was a bee.

I panicked and spent almost the entire flight keeping my eye on it making sure it didn’t come near me. My brother and I tried to usher it out the window, which it politely declined. I don’t think I ever looked out the window once.

Which is the main reason why, despite the fact that I may or may not have developed a very mild fear of heights in my adulthood, I jumped at the chance to fly in an aircraft a few days before the airport open house.

Originally, we were meant to take off at 8 a.m. sharp on Thursday; however, due to scheduling conflicts, the only open window for both myself and the pilot, Dennis, was Wednesday afternoon.

I arrived to the airport a little nervous, but mostly excited. I was told I’d be coasting over my hometown in a Lance Air 360, thanks to Josie Martel from En Vogue Marketing, Ken Moen the Carson City Airport Manager, and my steadfast volunteer pilot, Dennis.

As I have almost no educational training in aviation, this name meant nothing to me. But the plane was very cool looking, white and orange with a propeller on the nose and two seats in the front with a bench in the back; it could have been identical to the plane I flew in over twenty years ago with the bee.

Dennis, who had been flying planes for over twenty years, lives in Incline and had graciously offered to provide the opportunity for me. When I arrived, he headed out to the tarmac to ready the plane.

“It’ll be bumpy,” he said. I nodded and said it was fine. I’d been in a plane during wind before, I knew what I was in for, I thought.

Wrong. I have flown commercial in winds before, in big jets that can fit hundreds of people and you can’t feel every tiny bump and gust the skies throw at you.

Dennis showed me how to get into the plane; I stepped on a bike-pedal like footstep, climbed onto the wing, and slid through the small door into a leather seat. The window looking onto the runway was surprisingly narrow; the majority of the front was taken up by the instrument panel with all manner of dials, switches, and controls, along with two yokes (used to steer the plane) that were joined by a bar.

Dennis handed me a pair of headphones with a microphone, as once we were up in the air, it would be far too loud to hear each other without yelling. When he did, my knee grazed the bottom of the yoke, turning it just so.

“Make sure you don’t let your knees touch that,” he said seriously. “That would be very bad.”

I locked my legs into toothpick-straight positions, feeling a twinge of nervousness as I stared at the yoke in front of me like it was a live snake.

He pulled the plane towards the runway. “You always want to take off into the wind,” he noted. “It’ll give you a lift.”

He hit a switch, and in our headphones a repeating radio transmission sounded in our ears, detailing wind direction, velocity, altitude, and more. Dennis nodded.

“We’ll take off from that direction,” he said, “so we’ll be facing the wind.”

We took off heading west. In a commercial jet, the build up is always my favorite part, when you can feel the inertia holding you back against the seat as you speed faster and faster. Then, when the wheels lift off the ground, it get’s quieter, and you feel a drop in your stomach as you begin to defy gravity.

In the Lance, however, it seemed like as soon as we started rolling we were off, as quick as a bird leaving the ground.

No sooner than we were maybe ten feet off the ground, however, the first gust of wind hit us coming from the north. It shook the plane and pushed us several feet to the left, but Dennis was unbothered.

“I said it would be bumpy,” he said with a slight laugh, which calmed my jumping heart just a bit.

We cruised higher over the north side of town, over the golf course and the hot springs, toward WNC.

The plan was to go up over the Sierras and do a loop around Crystal Bay before heading back.

However, the wind had other plans.

Just as we were about to cross the foothills, we were hit with a gust so heavy it jerked the plane what felt like 45 degrees, but was probably significantly less.

Dennis let out a “woah,” which was slightly terrifying. “When they said 24, they meant it.”

That was 24 mph winds, I understood, but it felt like we’d been hit by something far more violent than an average residential speed limit.

Dennis headed east, did a loop, and tried going higher to avoid the gusts coming from the foothills. I’d been recording a video on my phone to document the flight until we’d been hit with that first gust, which, I was embarrassed to admit, left me a little shaken. I’d put my phone between my knees and used both hands to hold onto the small door handle, my knuckles turning slightly white, as if it could keep me from bouncing around. It could not.

We could just see a sliver of the the cobalt blue waters of Tahoe when the plane started rocking again.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to make it up there,” Dennis said, his voice coming through my headphones.

I kept staring straight ahead, fingers locked into the shallow handle. “That’s okay,” I said in a high voice that sounded much calmer than I felt. In case I was acting too-cool, however, I added, “I’m a little nervous.”

“Okay, I don’t want you to be nervous,” he said, and began heading southwest again. “We’ll head back.”

Dennis told me about how he’d grown up in southern California before moving to Incline. My grandparents are from Burbank, near where he was from. He pointed out the Minden Airport, Dayton, and Washoe Lake as we did a loop back around the valley towards the airport, gradually lowering our altitude. I have a feeling he was chatting because he knew I was internally saying my goodbyes to the world.

I was trying to pick out my parent’s neighborhood on the Eastside when the plane began to pitch once more as we lowered into a particularly rough area. For the briefest of moments, my arms lifted slightly as we dipped into a pocket that defied gravity, and in response, my stomach dropped as well.

That’s when I felt it. The sickly hot sensation of seasickness or, in this case, air sickness.

I’m no stranger to motion sickness. The one and only time I went to Girl Scout Camp, I threw up in the back of my troop leader’s minivan somewhere along the twisting roads of Tahoe. I’ve also thrown up on a boat in the Caribbean as a teenager, on a rollercoaster at Carson Valley Days as a fourth grader; I’ve even thrown up going up Kingsbury Grade just before beginning college.

However, in none of those instances was I trapped in a confined space, thousands of feet above the ground, where gravity seemed to not have as much of a grasp on us as it should.

Panic welled in me. At first, because I thought we’d fall from the sky and I’d die in a fiery blaze. But realistically, I knew Dennis was an experienced pilot who had flown through worse weather than this.

No, now I was terrified of the possibility that if we managed to survive, I’d have to deal with the fact that, as a grown adult, I was about to puke all over the cockpit of a plane flown by a man I barely knew who was doing me a favor out of sheer kindness, and for free, I might add.

I willed one hand to let go of the door handle and dug my thumb into the pressure point between the ulna and radius of my right arm, which is said to cure motion sickness. I’ve never actually tried it myself, as I tend to avoid situations in which I’ll be tossed around like a rag doll now, if the possibility arises.

“Don’t you dare,” I thought to myself, willing the sickness to ebb.

At that point, I was barely paying attention to whether or not we were about to die, but instead, I was relying on sheer will at that point to keep my stomach under control.

Fear of humiliation in front of a stranger is a powerful tool.

Dennis spoke to air command, informing them through the radio we’d be coming into land.

“No one else is flying today,” he said, nodding to the completely empty skies surrounding us as far as the eye could see. “They all know better.”

I saw the familiar runway of the Carson Airport, though it seemed so much smaller from where we were in the sky. It seemed in no time at all that we were only 100 feet above, then 50, until we were hovering just above the tarmac.

The wings wobbled and pitched, but Dennis kept it in control. The plane tried to shift left, then right, as the winds pushed and pulled. Finally the wheels touched down, and we were on the ground once more.

Dennis let out a huge sigh, followed by a laugh. I determined he had also been nervous, but was keeping it together far better than I was.

“Hey, no harm, no foul,” he said as the plane slowed. “I would never travel in this weather though. Never.”

My entire body was shaking from adrenaline, but imperceptibly — I hope.

I had done it. I had survived a a flight above Carson in a small plane in what I thought were small winds (wrong), and I’d even managed to look out the window a few times, thus reliving a disappointing childhood moment and remaking the experience.

Most importantly though, I’d kept my stomach in check.

Dennis parked beside a small yellow hanger and opened the door for me. I scurried out the way I’d come, and resisted the overly dramatic urge to kiss the asphalt when I made it down.

All in all, I’m glad I went up, though so far, no one has believed me when I told them the story about how I nearly died. Probably because it’s a gross exaggeration, but I have to have my fun somehow considering my limbs felt like jelly for the rest of the day.

Thanks to Josie from En Vogue, Dennis my calm cool and collected pilot, and Ken, the Carson City Airport Manager, for setting up my flight.

To learn more about the Carson City Airport and it’s programs, visit https://flycarsoncity.com